Chicago – October 202, 2024
Over the past year, we have watched in shock as mass slaughter has unfolded in Palestine – and, since September, in Lebanon. Israel has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children, and more than 2,300 Lebanese, including more than 120 children.
For Palestinian and Lebanese students, the pain is acute. We have watched our homelands destroyed, our people slaughtered, tortured and starved. Yet, as we, along with many allies, have tried to process this trauma and advocate for human rights, we have been vilified and silenced on campus. Our existence has been reduced to a problem, our grief weaponised, our calls for justice criminalised.
The same cannot be said about students who have actively advocated for Israel’s “right to self-defence” – a right that Israel does not have when it comes to resistance from a population it is occupying.
The effect of this “unbalanced” approach is that today Muslim and Arab students face increased harassment and discrimination, and their attackers are only emboldened because they know there will be no consequences for what they do.
The university’s hypocrisy became apparent to me and other Palestinian students almost immediately after October 7, 2023. On October 9, students at the Michigan Law School used the public law-open server, an email chain that connects everyone at the law school, to describe Palestinians as “animals” and their Muslim and Arab classmates as “rejoic[ing] in mass murder” and supporting rape. This language was reported to the administration, who took no action.
As the greater Michigan student body started organising and protesting on campus, the university’s discrimination against marginalised students became even more apparent. It repeatedly sent campus police to disperse our protests and sit-ins, with students being physically assaulted, pepper-sprayed and arrested, while hijabs of female students were ripped off.
It also ramped up surveillance. Police presence and the number of surveillance cameras around the Arab lounge on campus noticeably increased.
The administration never issued any apology for nor condemnation of the extreme acts of police violence against students who were protesting a genocide that the university funds.
This attitude isn’t unique to the University of Michigan. Nationwide, more than 3,000 people have been arrested for pro-Palestine advocacy on college campuses in just six months. Universities that once championed free speech have become hostile environments for Muslim and Arab students and their allies.
The chilling effect this has had is palpable. Many Muslim and Arab students now feel unsafe expressing their identities or views, fearing academic, legal and job prospect repercussions. For Palestinian students, this silencing is particularly traumatic – we are denied the right to mourn publicly or call for justice.
